"Crisis? What crisis?"- British Prime Minister James Callaghan This was a headline from The Sun newspaper (11 January 1979) referring to Callaghan's reply at an improvised press conference. Asked "What is your general approach, in view of the mounting chaos in the country at the moment?", Callaghan replied "Well, that's a judgment that you are making. I promise you that if you look at it from outside, and perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos."
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." This quote is often attributed to Sigmund Freud to show that even that a famous psychoanalyst can admit that not everything has a profound meaning; However, no variation of this quote ever appears in his writings. It was probably falsely attributed by a journalist, long after Freud's death. Actually, the quote is "Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe." The story goes that Freud was lecturing on oral fixation and one of his cheekier students asked about his ever-present pipe and Freud replied, sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. An alternative from Rudyard Kipling, from his poem "The Betrothed": "A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke."
